Microplastics

“What is rejected from the hand becomes the bearer of a deeper meaning than function, the bearer of the burden of the past, the pain of rejection, irrelevance, and therefore the bearer of something human. The works from Karanović’s Microplastics series summarize such examples of matter. Colored with melancholy, they still seem cheerful in the new system of signs, and their arrangement refers to letters from some sign language. They are not necessarily deciphered, but have the value of a certain message, the weight of which is subsequently measured. Much longer than its own role, matter survives, changed or unchanged, and man, as an organic part of it, can only look, collect and come up with meaning. We can also reject it, but it doesn’t fall into darkness, but into the language.”

– Minja Lazareski,

Belgrade Youth Center, 2023

“In her neo-pop-art work Microplastic, Dunja Karanović would also apply the method of collecting discarded or lost items and exhibit them as ready-made (little) sculptures. In the two-year process, which involved active movement through urban space, with a clear objective and passion of a collector Karanović accumulated a considerable number of small relics of consumerist culture, made of multi-colored plastic. Dinosaurs, various exotic animals, mermaids, puppets, individual extremities, arms, legs, Lego cubes, sets of dishes, clothespins, whatever you imagine on that small scale, and what testifies to the consumer cult of modern society, will get a new, semiological reading. Small objects of vivid colors, in a pop-art manner, will be arranged in new semantic structures that, behind the appealing hues, hide all the vanity of our social and ecological reality.”

— Helena Puhara

from the exhibition catalog, Sve što se odbaci, padne u jezik, Galerija Flora, 2023

Microplastics (2021-)

This series is a work/walk-in-progress. It is part of a contemplative process of slowing down, (re)tracing steps, looking back and looking below, considering heritage (personal and common), masculinity, femininity, consumption, engaging in an intergenerational dialogue and sometimes just shutting up. It is an attempt to pay attention to the heaviness and meaning of each step and the material consequences of our being here, locally, physically, environmentally. All of the materials I’ve used for creating these works have been lost, and found, used by the people around me, some of whom I might be close to, some of whom are no longer here, and some of whom I’ve never met.

The alignments/sentences try to reflect a semiology of the time and place, without strict considerations for grammar and semantics, but with a sense of curiosity for reading (into) and future archaeologies.

The works appeared in two collaborative shows entitled Everything that is discarded falls into language (Belgrade and Dubrovnik, 2023) developed with artists Sanda Črnelč and Elia Friganović.